According to IDC, 60% of Asia’s top 2,000 firms will reallocate customer experience budgets towards generative AI and phase out outdated software by 2027. And for a good reason: Generative AI advancements are revolutionising marketing as we know it, delivering smarter and more personalised customer interactions while empowering teams to achieve more with limited budgets.
Imagine being able to get a quick “TLDR” download of a customer’s history instead of prowling the data abyss. Or knowing which cases to prioritise among the influx of customer requests. In today’s digital age, AI is making it easier for organisations to get to know customers beyond devices and screens. Conversational AI, in particular, is transforming the way customers engage with brands both online and through contact centres. It can decrease inbound calls to contact centres, allowing organisations to better optimise resources and manpower.
Customers frequently grapple with complex search categories in the process of making online purchases. AI can simplify this process by minimising the steps from product selection to checkout and enhancing the overall shopping experience. On the back end, AI helps agents better understand customer needs, enabling them to tailor solutions that directly address client issues. Modern contact centres are increasingly incorporating generative AI technology that prompts agents with relevant recommendations and best actions based on customer history and requirements.
Conversational AI systems use natural language processing and advanced large language models to generate complex sentences independently, understand user intent, and respond to customers as humans would. When this capability is paired with deep customer insights within a customer engagement platform, the customer experience becomes even richer.
AI plays a crucial role in consolidating disparate data points, offering agents with actionable insights, and reducing workload and stress with transcription and automated report-writing capabilities. Agents, armed with intelligent speech recognition tools, gain more free time to build authentic human connections.
Integrating AI in workflows
As personalised experiences and intuitive user interfaces take centre stage, AI will undoubtedly play a more critical role in the customer experience value chain. While AI brings several benefits, over-reliance or improper implementation can also prove to be counterproductive.
For example, customers may find it frustrating to engage with an ineffective AI chatbot. So there should still be an immediate hand-off to a live agent when an escalation point is reached. Real-time data access from conversational AI solutions enables agents to intervene promptly when the AI engine fails to grasp the full context of customer enquiries.
Even when customer interactions are powered by AI, maintaining a human touch is essential as customers crave authentic connections. In essence, AI should enhance — not replace — human interaction to build lasting customer loyalty.
The new marketing and customer engagement paradigm
As AI takes on more of the heavy lifting and automates routine tasks, marketers need to evolve to become catalysts of innovation and focus more on functions such as strategic oversight, ideation, and relationship building.
Amid a sea of automated systems and protocols, human-driven testing, learning, and adapting remain crucial for marketing and customer experience transformation. Marketing and customer engagement teams must adeptly leverage AI-generated insights to make informed decisions that both align with organisational goals and resonate with targeted audiences and make the human-with-machine dynamic work.
At the end of the day, AI cannot replace the authentic human connection that should lie at the core of brand-customer interactions. Used correctly, AI would only elevate human interactions and foster better customer loyalty. For all its promises, achieving digital greatness with AI requires more than just technology. Truly embracing AI requires a shift in mindset and the cultivation of an innovative culture: a transformation that marketing and customer engagement teams must approach thoughtfully.
